Remember these areas are mostly Democratic strong holds which means it is icing on the cake for DeathSantis if it costs them more than they can afford in extra taxes. He gets to hurt a large company that disagrees with him even as it brings much needed revenue into the state and hurt the majority democrats in the area as well. Win Win for the fascist governor.
The Reedy Creek Improvement Act essentially allows Walt Disney World to reside in Florida unregulated, acting as its own “government” in a way. The act involved creating a special taxing district that acts with the same authority as a county government.
This situation, while complex, seemed fairly cut-and-dry until reporters started to do the numbers and figure out what the termination of the Reedy Creek Improvement Act would actually mean for local taxpayers.
Mary Ellen Klas, the Miami Herald Capitol Bureau Chief tweeted some more information regarding the situation between Disney and Gov. DeSantis. As you can see, the termination of this act could transfer a whopping $2 billion worth of debt over to taxpayers, resulting in thousands of dollars in tax bills.
Sen. @JeffreyBrandes asks: "My concern is this bill essentially wipes away Disneys' $2 billion of debt…if the legislative intent here is ultimately to attack them, then why would we want to cancel $2 billion of debt?"
Sen. @jenn_bradley says that the debt will be transferred to the "general purpose government" which is likely to be the county. Asked if the 1.7 millon residents of Orange and Osceola should be asked if they want to assume the debt, she avoided an answer.
.@FarmerForFLSen pressed her: Where in this bill (which applies to Disney and 5 other districts) does it say that these six districts don't serve a public purpose? @jenn_bradley concedes there is nothing that says they don't serve a public purpose.
JUST IN: Ron DeSantis’ plan to punish Disney for supporting LGBTQ rights by repealing their special district governing authority would raise taxes on Florida families in the Orlando area by $2,200 each, per @miamiherald.
— No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen (@NoLieWithBTC) April 20, 2022
Amb. Victoria Neuland joins Morning Joe to discuss attempts at diplomacy with Russia, why she says Putin cares little for his own people and the impact sanctions are having on Russia.
Ayman Mohyeldin: “That judge—who was rated unqualified to be a judge—has the sole power to loosely or narrowly interpret the word ‘sanitation,’ and change the rules for hundreds of millions of Americans.”
Understand this is about installing right wing propaganda as the preferred way of thinking at Florida schools. If you read the article these quotes come from you see the issue is that the Republican majority took issue that education did not demand allegiance to the idea of the “Americans all ways right exceptionalism” and that crediting agencies stopped the Republican leaders from taking over the school. On student talks of bring right wing media provocateurs to speak at the school now and got cheers. I will put some quotes from that article first, then the main story from Joe my god.
The measure, Senate Bill 7044, was signed a week after an “intellectual diversity” survey was sent out to all university staff, students and faculty. The survey, required in a bill approved last year, posed questions asking if students felt their professors used their platforms to inject their viewpoint and asked all about their political beliefs. The statewide faculty union called for a boycott of the survey and several faculty leaders expressed fear that it would chill free speech.
The bill signed Tuesday also took on accreditation agencies, requiring state universities to switch accreditors after each cycle. Some faculty leaders have expressed fears that the measure could cause Florida schools to lose research funds and federal student aid.
The provision stems from friction last year between some state leaders and the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges, the accrediting organization for universities in the Southeast. The group had raised questions about political influence at Florida State University and the University of Florida.
At FSU, the issue arose after education commissioner Richard Corcoran made a bid to become the university’s president. Corcoran spoke at Tuesday’s news conference in favor of the bill.
Tuesday’s event also featured Taylor Walker, a conservative student from FSU majoring in history. She spoke of bringing conservative commentator Ben Shapiro to campus, sparking applause from residents at The Villages.
“As a conservative on a college campus, sometimes you have to face some hurdles,” Walker said. “There still are some individuals out there who think woke narratives are the only narratives that should be taught on college campuses. As a history major, I can attest to that. As I go into my classes, my professors hold me to high standards, as they should. This bill gives me the opportunity to hold them to the same high standards that they should be held to.”
Notice the idea pushed is that professors only teach left wing woke stuff. Oh my god the right is so abused. These are college age students and they had a choice to go to any school that supported their ideas but went to these schools because they taught an accredited higher education that the right doesn’t agree with so they legislate that if the teaches teach that stuff they don’t like they will fire the teachers. The right doesn’t want education they want indoctrination. Repeat by rote how great the Republican autocrats authoritarians are!
Gov. Ron DeSantis on Tuesday signed a bill that makes it harder for faculty at state universities to retain tenure, framing the legislation as another way that he and the Legislature are working to prevent educators from bringing their political views into the classroom.
In a wide-ranging news conference at The Villages that took swings at Twitter and alleged that textbook publishers were peddling hidden agendas, DeSantis criticized what he called “lifetime appointments” for university professors.
“We need to make sure the faculty are held accountable and make sure they don’t just have tenure forever without having any type of ways to hold them accountable or evaluate what they’re doing,” DeSantis said.
DeathSantis must be trying to raise from the dead “Trump University” because that’s how other colleges and university will view the education level of Florida students.
It’s a continuum that we saw with Joe McCarthy and worse. Meet Trofim Lysenko.
No doubt, the intended long-term outcome is to force university professors seeking employment to avoid Florida, which will allow Republicans to shut down public higher education for lack of qualified teachers.
They’ve been warning us for decades that their goal is to destroy public education, including at the university level. They know it’s their now-or-never chance to finally do it.
When discussions turn to the rise of authoritarianism, crackdowns on the press or the judiciary are usually front and center. Equally under threat though, is academic freedom. In a healthy democracy, academics have the freedom to research, teach, and act as a corrective to societies, governments, and institutions, which are supposed to protect them.
Across the world, authoritarian leaders are targeting universities and professors to silence critical thinking and crush academic freedom. In Hungary, Turkey, Nicaragua and Mexico universities, academics and scientists, have come under attack from the authorities as governments try to restrict freedom of expression.
A Florida manpleaded guilty today in U.S. District Court to threatening a member of the U.S. House of Representatives. Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division and U.S. Attorney Roger B. Handberg for the Middle District of Florida made the announcement.
On April 19, David Hannon, 67, of Sarasota, entered a guilty plea before U.S. Magistrate Judge Christopher P. Tuite to an information charging him with one count of threatening a federal official.
According to information presented at the guilty plea hearing, on July 16, 2019, while in Sarasota, Hannon sent an email to U.S. Congresswoman Ilhan Omar threatening to kill her.
Hannon sent the email following a televised press conference held by Representative Omar and three other U.S. Congresswomen.
In his threatening email, which had a subject line that read, “[You’re] dead, you radical Muslim,” Hannon referred to Congresswoman Omar and the other Congresswomen of color as “radical rats,” and asked Congresswoman Omar if she was prepared “to die for Islam.”
The email further stated that Hannon was going to shoot the Congresswomen in the head.
David Hannon, 67, a supporter of former President Donald Trump, sent an email to Omar in July 2019, after Omar and three other members of Congress held a televised news conference criticizing then-President Trump.https://t.co/8fwExHWZEw
Rep. Ilhan Omar shared her take on a viral video showing a Christian worship group breaking out for a prayer song in the middle of their flight. Omar wondered if the passengers and the media would have a different reaction if a Muslim worship group held a prayer session while on a plane, which we all know the answer to that question.“I think my family and I should have a prayer session next time I am on a plane. How do you think it will end?”
These same groups that want to ban the rainbow flags, which simply suggest a safe place for LGBTQ+ students, are very happy with and at times insist that easter decorations go up, charismas decorations, in god we trust mottos, confederate statues and battle flags, pictures of opposite gender couples, things about families such as one man and one woman. That is what this is all about. They want to push only their preferred narrative and erase that LGBTQ+ exist. It is the same with pushing their preferred Christain verses but would freak if Muslims wanted to put a couple verses from the Koran. Imagine a Muslim teacher wanted to put “Allahu Akbar!” which is ‘God is most great’, next to the Christian “in God We Trust” signs? I could list more examples, but you get the point. It is about privilege to display what they think is normal yet stop anything display they think is weird or wrong.
A Maryland school board has moved to adopt a new policy on political symbols that could ban items like the rainbow pride flag in public school classrooms after members said teachers were “bullied” into displaying pride flags that were recently donated by an LGBTQ group. The Carroll County school board has voted to develop a new flag policy that may only allow the U.S. flag, Maryland state flag and Carroll County flags to be displayed in classrooms.
Superintendent Steven Lockard said during Wednesday’s board meeting that the flags were available to any staff member who wanted one and were not forced upon anyone. The local group Concerned Parents of Carroll County said in a statement provided to Fox News Digital that it supported the board’s decision to develop a flag policy. The group recently announced that it was working with Moms for Liberty’s Carroll County chapter to provide an American flag to classrooms in the district.
With all the gains our community has made in the last couple of decades, including not just marriage equality but also strong public support for it, I never thought I would see the pendulum swing back so quickly.
Hidden deep in the text banning gay flags it will allow for religious flags on holidays. Just wait! christians can’t help but insert themselves every chance they can.
Don’t these morons have anything better to do? Seriously! It just makes me roll my eyes over the fact that these people get so butt hurt overseeing the rainbow flag. I guess they believe that if little Johnny sees it he’ll immediately want to give little Billy a BJ.
The Christo-Fascists are on a crusade. They’re demonizing, dehumanizing and criminalizing us again as groomers/pedophiles, un-natural, mentally ill and deviant sinners. They want to erase us again and bully us back into our respective closets. NEVER AGAIN!
Exactly! These fascists are on the warpath and won’t stop until homosexuality is a crime again. At best they want gay people deep in the closet and at worst they want them in prison or dead! We are living in very bad times right now. The religious crazies are trying to take over and we must not let that happen.
LGBT kids are bullied. That’s not political, it’s reality. The rainbow flag in classrooms or on teacher’s doors lets bullied kids know that they are respected and supported in school. That’s only political in the eyes of those who see protecting LGBT students as a threat to their superiority.
So, people can support banning all “political” flags, but they should be aware of the actual intention behind the rainbow flag, which has nothing to do with politics.
The pride flag is an awareness flag, it is not a political flag, it never has been. They want us to think it is political, it’s not, don’t fall for that. We are not a political agenda, a political party, a political ideology…never have been. We are humans and we exist, that’s what our flag symbolizes.
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